"Up to 100" ghost detainees
- [Update to the following, added Fri a.m.: Excellent lead editorials on this subject today in both the WaPo and the NYT.
The NYT also led with the news story on this on the front page. Down near the bottom of that story is this intriguing little bit of reporting involving our old friend Dougie Feith. End of update.]
- The United States kept up to 100 "ghost detainees" in Iraq off the books to conceal them from Red Cross observers, a far higher number than previously reported, Army generals told Congress on Thursday.
The one major case people know of, in Iraq, was the one where a ghost detainee was apparently beaten to death and then his body was kept on ice (and photographed) before MPs took it out for disposal.
As I've noted here before, the worst abuses the apartheid-era security forces committed against SA nationals happened when those people were not in formal detention. Sometimes they would have people in formal detention, then release them especially so they could pick them up off the streets again and keep them "off the record books" before they tortured them to death.
Today, it was Gen. Paul Kern, commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, who told a Senate committee hearing on abuses of Iraqi prisoners that he believed the number of ghost detainees held in violation of Geneva Convention protections was "in the dozens to perhaps up to 100," far surpassing the eight people identified in an Army report, the Reuters report says.
The main reason Kern and Maj. Gen. George Fay, deputy commander at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, who was also testifying could not be more precise was, they said, because the CIA--which apparently was responsible for the vast majority of cases of 'ghost detainees'-- did not give the Army investigators the info they needed for a more precise estimate.
Reuters added:
- Senators called the CIA's failure so far to turn over information sought by Army investigators unacceptable.
"The situation with the CIA and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie," said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
Fay said he made repeated requests for documents from the CIA, "and they said that they would not provide me with the information that I requested."
In June, the CIA inspector general said the agency would conduct its own investigation, Fay said.
"Well, I think that this is something that needs to be asked, Mr. Chairman, of the incoming director of the CIA," McCain said, referring to Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican tapped by President George W. Bush to run the CIA.
[Virginia Sen. John] Warner said the Senate Intelligence Committee was pressing the CIA for information, and said the Armed Services Committee may hold a hearing specifically on ghost detainees.